Sunday, 21 September 2014

Shifting Plates

A week, as they say, is a long time in politics. Few commentators could have imagined six weeks ago that the UK's political tectonic plates would have shifted by as much as they have - but this is the nature of tectonic plates. They're sticky and hard to move, so pressure builds up until all the movement happens at once. The parties are now looking at the impending GE in 2015 in quite a different way, and next week's expected recall of Parliament will see it start to play out. Localism is something all parties toy with until they're in power, when the thought of giving any of it away to we ordinary folk suddenly becomes less attractive. As I've written many times before, the Labour party is constitutionally unable to implement localist policies without imploding; central command and control is so fundamental to socialism that without it the party transforms from socialist to communitarian. The Lib Dems are now an electoral irrelevance, all but dead at the polls but with enough MPs until 2015 to be able to interfere in the future. Only the Tories would have had the capacity to absorb and implement localism without self-destructing. I write 'would have had' - for the members, citizens, who would have made this possible have been disowned by the metropolitan party and now largely support UKIP. A desperate Miliband has just announced an increase in minimum wage to £8 in a last ditch effort to improve Labour's poll ratings, but Labour's economics have no credibility any more with voters. Voters know it was Labour that buggered the economy, Labour that turned an official blind eye to the mass sexual abuse of vulnerable children by Muslims, Labour that has disempowered English voters to prop up its own power and Labour that will deny them the level of political participation that many are now waking to. A desperate Cameron will seek to devolve to England decisions on how to spend the money allocated by a central government without allowing England to decide instead how much money to allocate to the central State. I don't know how this will play out; my small voice will just continue to plug the same Localism I've plugged since I started this blog in 2007, on the basis of the candle principle.

Ps J WPreciselyCameron has Milibean over a barrel.You're wrong about CLegg though, "localism" has long been a Lem-0-Crat ideal.Thus, even if he can't get a majority (again) Cameron gets another coalition with the Lemons, because Labour are seen to have betrayed the English.Very, very smooth

A rather good post R, nothing in this old universe is set - only a politician would believe that.

As tectonic plates do, they heave and shift to form new geomorphic landscapes and vistas, trouble is though - timescales and geologically speaking even glacial pace - is quick, so what we need is a new FORCE of nature.....